Letter writer: A mecca for poor excuses

I was pretty disappointed in the Mountain Xpress’ defense of printing the hateful letter of Mr. [Alan] Ditmore hoping that Mecca would be bombed. You respond saying that Mr. Ditmore did not express hate toward a particular group of people. I find that defense extremely disingenuous.

It is common knowledge that Mecca is the holy place for Muslim people. Since I know you have a copy of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, go ahead and look up Mecca, “a city in Saudi Arabia that was the birthplace of Muhammad and is the holiest city of Islam.” To feign ignorance on this point discredits your organization and shows that y’all might be afraid to buck the Trump pro-bullying, pro-violence, pro-xenophobic trend.

Also, on the point of shouting fire in a crowded theater, I wonder if you would have printed Mr. Ditmore’s letter if a word or two were substituted, as in, “I also hope someone will bomb the Mountain Xpress offices” — no hatred is expressed toward a group of people there, either.

I hope it is obvious that giving this type of venom is directly advocating violence toward a group of people and that you will never be a part of disseminating that venom again.

— Amy Meier Asheville

Editor’s response: It did not escape our attention that Mecca is a holy city for Muslims. The question is whether we, as a newspaper, should restrict publication of opinions about possible actions that our elected leaders have the power to take. On the second point, the parallel would appear to fall flat, since the original point of discussion was not about “someone” — but someone who is now the head of our government. It would seem unlikely that the president would order a strike on Mountain Xpress, though that could conceivably be a matter for debate.

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

24 thoughts on “Letter writer: A mecca for poor excuses”

Amy, Amy, Amy……..You were doing pretty good until the last sentence in your 2nd paragraph. “Pro-violence, pro-bullying..”?? come on, you are describing the various responses of the Left, most recently the ridiculously violent and destructive event at Berkeley last week.

Admit it, you guys are just refusing to accept the reality that your candidate, your gal, Hillary the Crooked, lost the election.
The hypocrisy is astounding. Dishonest Hillary bullied Trump in the last debate about whether or not he would graciously accept defeat, and urge his supporters to do the same, assuming that she would win, which looked to be a reality at the time.
It seems that anyone on the Left who was not totally shameless would more or less chill.
Much like those of us who felt the same as you in 2008 decided to give this unknown young guy from Illinois a chance.
Amy, are you one of the Shameless ones?

Yes, despite getting three million more votes. I know, I know, electoral college, etc. But stop pretending that the majority in this country has to sit still for a radical agenda pushed by the guy who couldn’t get more votes, not even over “Hillary the Crooked”. Jeez, whatta loser. He doesn’t have a mandate to take this country on a hard swing to the right. He can try, certainly. But don’t expect the rest of us to sit silent.

Granted, Trump has a big mouth and makes impulsive, sometimes childish verbal comments.
But radical agenda?? Perhaps optimistic, but I predict that REALLY squashing ISIS (not the same as overt expansionist aggression), securing our borders and doing a better job vetting those who do enter (not the same as hating immigrants),
and bringing jobs back to this country and getting the economy doing better than the 1% growth rate during the past eight years (not the same as enriching his billionaire buddies), will happen. He WILL stand up to Russia, Iran, China, and any other country that threatens our security, something that did not happen under Obama. So, though you can rant about your perception of what might happen, based on some loose talk on Trump’s part, it is difficult to imagine the country being in worse shape in four years than it is right now, on many fronts. Do you not have any concept of how scary it has been for traditional moderates over the past four years? And the worst behavior you witnessed was a bunch of older folks marching for tax breaks and less authoritarian federal government, called the tea party. And they scared you all so much that the liberal press and others went out and made false claims about racism and so forth. The almighty race card. Put it away, before you all further divide this country. The only racism I see every day is that created by the media and liberals everywhere.

Just the qualities you want in a President, huh? That’s the closest I’ve heard a Trump supporter come to admitting the real truth: he is an abject liar. Everyone with a brain knows that his ‘millions of illegals voted for Hillary’ stuff is a lie. This is now the face that the rest of the world sees as our elected leader: a childish ego who can’t admit he lost the popular vote to a woman, and has no shame continuing to push his lie long after we’re all shaking our heads at it.

How many other things has he lied to you about?

The only racism I see every day is that created by the media and liberals everywhere.

Yeah, let’s just pretend the past eight years never happened, shall we?

And yet Summers you support someone who covered up several rapes, a possible murder, corruption in a foundation, taking away one’s freedom and jailing them over a YouTube video,the death of a US Ambassador, passing weapons to an enemy, and putting US security at risk.

Such faux outrage by people whose pie holes remained shut for nearly 6 years as Obama waged a proxy war against the muslims of Syria, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands, the displacement of millions, and the destruction of their country. Where’s their outrage concerning the thousands killed and millions starving to death right now in Yemen due to Saudi Arabia’s bombing of civilians and infrastructure with US supplied weapons?

Seems to me that they really don’t care about Muslims, but they love to pretend that they do.

I don’t find much comedy in seeing our country rapidly devolve into fascism, but must say that Jon Stewart hit it on the head when he joked about Trump declaring an official language of the US. I would have thought it to be English, but Stewart is right, our official language is now “bulls**t.”

Barry, your patience in arguing with these folks is truly amazing, I commend you for continuing to fight fiction with truth. But how do you dialogue with people who don’t think that facts matter?

You can disagree with a court ruling, you can fight it through the appeals process. But it’s virtually unheard of for a president to question the legitimacy of a particular judge or the judiciary.

Many more examples, of course, that Donald J. Trump could seriously unwind the republic. But he needs the help of parrots, sycophants, propagandists and non-people (Anonymous Sockpuppets, for example) to get it done. pause… two… three…

You’re grasping at straws. The so-called judge was legislating from the bench. That’s not his job; judging according to the law is. Thus he was not acting like a judge. Nothing illegal about what Trump did. He will be vindicated.

You left out the worst example of all — Trump’s Super Bowl tweet. Winners? Really? Winners? That game was rigged. Very, very rigged. It was a disgrace, that game was so rigged. Did you see the so-called “referees”? They so-called “penalties” whenever they felt like it. No review. Well, some review, but it took too long and it was always the same thing with those hand signals and nobody knows what they mean. And who decides what’s out-of-bounds, anyway? Political correctness? Not anymore. We’re going to change that, believe me, we’re going to change that. And it was so rigged. Because half the points were scored by guys who looked like the blacks or maybe they sneaked in from Mexico. Could have been Mexico. And maybe they were drug dealers and rapists and bad hombres, and I assume some were good people. Many people have said that. Many, many people.

Wrong. I didn’t leave anything out. I know all the best Trump fascist moments, and I’ll be having a press conference soon to lay them all out. It will be the best press conference, ever. Believe me. All the best networks and newspapers will carry it. Certainly not the traitors CNN or NBC or the failing New York Times or CBS or MSNBC or FOX (damn you, Shep Smith) or ABC or Washington Post or.. what was I saying? Must have been fabulous, absolutely the best, whatever it was, believe me.

Thank you, Mr. Summers. Thank you. I see your point and I appreciate the answer. We all do. Please don’t kick me out of the press conference. Please. I’ll be good. Nice tie, by the way. Those Chinese have a way with ties, don’t they?

But how do you dialogue with people who don’t think that facts matter?

Thanks – but sadly, it’s not so much for me a dialogue with them. It’s trying to set the record straight when they lie, or blindly repeat a lie that someone else told them. These comment threads, together with sites like Facebook etc., are the new town square where people come to hash out ideas. The Right has learned that there is progress to be made in pumping places like this full of disinformation.

Of course, it’s also worth assuming that one or two of the anonymous “people” on these pages are not what they appear.